Maturity
by pumpkintoasty
Summary: Rory contemplates growing up. Small amount of JavaJunkie, much more about the RoryLorelei relationship.


A/N: Just a little Rory monologue, clearly from about fifth season. Ephemeral time wise, really.

When she was little, her greatest wish, harbored deep down inside, where her mother couldn't see it because it would hurt, confuse and worry her mother, was that someday, in a miraculous manner swiped straight from some bad movie, her parents would fall back in love, get married and the three (and someday possibly more, when she was that young she still had the perennial yen for siblings that marked youth) of them would live happily ever after. Then she could be like Nicole and Stephanie and Melissa who were in Miss Stevensons third grade class with her, and had perfect blonde mothers who baked cupcakes for the class on their daughters birthdays and tall, strong fathers who worked in the city, so they never made it to school functions, but they were present in the golden bands that the mothers wore, that shone while they put the pink-frosted cupcake on her desk on top of the My Little Pony napkin.

(Someday she would deliver a blow to these Mommy Barbies when she played "the other woman" to one of their daughters husband, and on some low level she would recognize and revel in this, but she did not know this at eight so she could not fight and had no realization that she would ever be able to.)

But instead she had the towns most beloved single mother, radiant, witty and brunette. Everyone in Stars Hollow loved her mother and she knew that, and everyone in town also loved her- she was a true native daughter they could be proud of. But she was equally aware that everyone thought her mother was more than a little bit crazy and that her footsteps were followed by clucking about the most _unusual_ manner in which Lorelei Gilmore was raising her daughter. (And wasnt it peculiar how she had named her daughter after herself? Who does that?)

Her father was a series of momentary experiences. It was clichéd but she simultaneously loved and loathed visits with her father. He never came to Stars Hollow, so their meetings were in restaurants in Hartford, parks and zoos, and sometimes whatever apartment he was living in if it was nearby. Even the few daughters of divorce who were in her class had fathers who occasionally made appearances in town; they materialized from time to time. Her father was all mist and shadow- she suspected some people in town didn't even really think he existed, the supposed, handsome, charming Christopher. But much like her mother (but not like her mother at all- her mother she could never loath, would always love, no matter what) she could not help but love him, in spite of his faults, and this let her continue her secret wish.

Sometimes she worries that her mother suspects. When her mother drops her off in front of the restaurant with her small suitcase of clothes and knapsack filled to the brim with second hand books, she thinks she sees a slight sadness in those blue eyes, a certain suspicion that this is not the way her daughter wants things to be, that she desperately wants it to be another way. She will never confirm nor deny these suspicions to her mother and does her best to mask them.

And for the most part she succeeds. For years she masks those last cherished hopes, hides her discomfort with her mothers high spirited winsomeness, and mixed feelings about her father. (Or does she? Is she not, at sixteen, the antithesis to her mother at the same age? Does she not, as she ages, embrace all the trappings of affluence that her parents had rejected in their youth? Does she just sublimate these feelings into forming a personality that is opposite to her mothers in the ways that matter? Or is she so different from her mother at all?)

Somehow, she thinks, all of this culminated in Dean (Or was it Jess? How quickly Dean had gone from black leather bad to plain porridge good!) The shades of her father were undeniable- motorcycles and from the big city! That Rory Gilmore will end up just like that mother of hers! And he knew nothing of her mother, of her past, of the cupcakes, of her empty, fatherless weekends, of the sidewalk in Hartford. He just thought she was a pretty girl who was very smart and sweet. (In the end her relationship with Dean would make her question if she was either of these things. Smart girls dont give up nice boys like Dean for boys who leave on buses without goodbyes. Sweet girls dont string two boys along for months, and certainly dont snob up on boys who leave their wives for them. Dean was too good for her and she hopes he realizes that and finds a nice girl who he can really love and can love him back. She will never be that girl and it breaks her heart.)

But more than finding Dean, she reaches out and begins to let go of the dream. In doing so- when she realizes the Christopher will never be the father she needs- she also realizes that maybe thats okay because there are others (especially scruffy, baseball-cap-wearing others) who are willing to fill the roll, with more sincerity and aplomb than her father could ever have managed. Before she reached said diner owner she did have to try on some others. Her first try is Max, and she knows now that even if things had worked out with her mom, he never would have worked in that roll. He does however work as an advisor, and though her mother doesn't know it, because these are the sorts of things she does not tell her mother, because her mother would obsess about them, she asked him to read her college application essays. (Max was always so uncomfortable with their history- perhaps because segments of it always seemed to appear at the most awkward moments. He never even met. Here Luke has a definite advantage- hes been learning the long and storied Gilmore lore for years and it holds very few, if any, surprises for him.)

So she keeps looking, and somewhere around the time he fixed their doorknob (or was it the oven? Or did he move some furniture? Or was he just feeding them their third meal of the day?) her eyes are fully opened to Luke Danes and the fact that he has been taking care of her and her mother for years, being more of a husband to Lorelei than Rory had ever hoped for her mother. Realizing this, she began to build a little nook in her heart for him, began to cherish a new idea- a quiet Stars Hollow wedding (would it be too clichéd to have it at the Dragonfly and the reception at the diner?), Luke moving into the big house, and perhaps, someday, those twins that her mother once dreamed of...

But none of this was entirely conscious, so when her father comes to her and says that her parents may be getting back together she feels... well, shes nonplused. At 8- heck at 15- this would have been all shed ever hoped for. But her perspectives have shifted and she no longer likes the idea of Christopher in their house (Is Atheir her mother and hers, or Luke, her mother and hers? So confused have her desires and reality become in the surrealism of the moment that she doesn't really know what the pronoun refers to.) But shes Rory Gilmore and her father looks so confident, and so much of her self is invested in doing what she thinks will make her mother happy (her beloved mother, who is so fragile under all that scrappy tenacity) so she smiles and acts excited just like everyone expect her to. (For what is Rory Gilmore but the materialization of others expectations?)

When things fall apart (again) she thinks a little thank you.

And then she waits. Her mother and Luke are so right that they cant help but happen, though she swears her mother tried her darnedest. And then it happens, and she is so excited because for once what she wanted is happening while she still _wants_ it. But she keeps it inside, because with her mother it is always a balancing act and too much emotion on any of the beams her mother is managing at any moment can cause the entire thing to tumble- she has no idea what extreme gushing of joy and relief would do to her mother, but she suspects its make her skittish, so she refrains.

Her grandmothers reaction, and subsequent scheming is unpredicted and upsetting in the extreme. (It is odd that just four years ago- around the time of Grandpas angina- Grandma had seemed so receptive to Luke (hadnt she?) and yet now, she is so hostile. She cannot explain it, except for that Emily had the possibility of Christopher presented and snatched away again, and that had been the last disappointment she could stand.)

She cannot say that her deepest and most desperate desire will not change again someday, but she knows this: some things never change. She still has daydreams about her mother walking aisles in white dresses far more often than those about herself doing the same. She has always worried who will protect her wonderfully buoyant mother from the world after she had moved on in life, and sought to put someone in her place to do it. But maturation means the abandonment of old ideals and she has come to realize that her dashing father will never be the person who can take her place. He is a father, and he loves her, but that doesn't make him right. The right one is there with a coffee pot everyday, fixing the sink and carrying that mattress around.

She will do anything for them because she knows this is right.

When she was little her greatest wish, harbored deep down inside, where her mother couldn't see it because it would hurt her mother, was that someday her parents would fall back in love and they would all live happily ever after. She still wants happily ever after. She just knows how to make it happen now.


End file.
